Walking as Artistic Practice – interview with Esther Polak

EP: AmsterdamREALTIME was a key work for me, and from it, I developed a whole method of thinking about mobility in general. So for me, the interesting thing about human walking is that humans not only walk – walking is only one category of mobility that we employ. So we also, especially in Amsterdam, many of the participants in AmsterdamREALTIME went by bike because that is the most, especially 20 years ago, but still the most normal way of going about in the city for the people who actually live there.

I started to be really interested because we had participants who were pedestrians that went by bike or by automobile, which is very inconvenient in Amsterdam. I started to be really interested in these different categories of mobility possibilities. And I called it Move Act.

I was also interested in Judith Butler, who developed a whole theory on the categorization between genders, male and female. And I appropriated that to mobility. And I developed a whole line of thinking about mobility patterns and landscape depending on which me, which move, act category, move category you find yourself in. And that’s interesting.

 

Online interview by Ellen Mueller in the context of the book Walking as Artistic Practice
link to the interview
related to AmsterdamREALTIME